The environment will keep me thinking about the spiritual goal, if I, in turn, care that everyone is thinking about our unity and doesn’t abandon these thoughts. Thus, everyone will receive this impression, grow stronger, and advance. This is called “mutual guarantee,” whereby everyone cares about others having everything that is necessary for spiritual advancement. If instead of worrying about receiving from the environment, I worry about how to strengthen the bond between friends, as a mother cares about her children, then this is sufficient for this environment to begin influencing me.

First of all, I have to take actions in the direction of giving, connection, and care. I should view myself as being bigger than them in this regard, in order to influence them, strengthen them; I should search for additional ways of how to provide this for them. And after this I have to be able to humble myself in order to receive from them.

This will come to you, because by putting efforts into something it becomes dear and important to you, and thus influences you. It is similar to parents being both impressed by and dependent upon their children.

If I stay alone for one moment, without the support of the group, I will immediately fall. By myself I have no grip on spirituality, the Creator, or bestowal. I can either be within my spiritual vessel while I am connected with the others and receive support from them, or outside of it. As soon as I lose their support, I fall.

One cannot advance and achieve something on his own. He won’t be able to keep himself in spirituality even for an instant. If a person thinks that he can advance on his own through reading Kabbalah books, performing some actions, and keep on the spiritual path, then it is self-deception. One will be lying to himself and only hoping in vain for advancement. Without participation and connection with the group, called the mutual guarantee, we have no chance to stay in spirituality even for a moment.

Besides, to be present in the spiritual environment doesn’t mean to be in it physically. What matters is how strongly a person desires this environment to impact him since that testifies to his desire to put himself under the influence of the Upper Force or the Creator. But if a person simply reads Kabbalistic texts in solitude, he will not be under the Creator’s influence because everything one reads passes through his egoistical filter. A person will perceive the book as he understands, feels, and desires to see it!

Thus, I’m under the influence of the Creator only if what I read comes to me through the group. The Creator or the Light “dwells amongst his people,” meaning within the group, the assembly of the souls.

Individually we have no chance for spiritual advancement. We have to understand very clearly that our only instrument to unveiling the Creator is our unity.

The Zohar, Chapter “VaYigash (Then Judah Approached),” Item 2: However, everything was created in the Torah, and everything was perfected in the Torah. And as the Torah begins with Bet, the world was created in Bet. This is so because before the Creator created the world, the Nukva, all the letters came before Him and entered one at a time in reverse order, in the order of Tav-Shin-Reish-Kof and not in the order of Aleph-Bet-Gimel-Dalet.

Item 3: The letter Tav came before Him and said, “You wish to create the world with me.” The Creator replied, “I do not, since many righteous are destined to die in you. …This is why the world will not be created in you.”

Item 4: The three letters, Shin-Kof-Reish, approached each on his own. The Creator told them, “You are unfit for the world to be created in you for you are the letters used for reading Sheker [deceit/falsehood], and a lie is unworthy of rising before Me.”

This can be compared to how we ask the Creator to help us unite the desire (Kli). The letters are the formation of Malchut. Essentially, it is her that we are trying to construct from our points in the heart.

Hence, if we come to the Creator with our desire (although we don’t presently realize it), crying like infants not knowing exactly what to ask, it works as though we are appealing to the Creator in all kinds of forms and letters. Yet we get nothing in return until we discover the correct desire or the correct letter.

Item 5: The letters Peh and Tzadik approached, and so did all of them until they reached the letter Chaf. When the Chaf descended from the Keter [Keter written with Chaf in Hebrew], the upper ones and the lower ones were shaken, until everything came to exist in the letter Bet, which is the sign for Beracha [blessing], and in it, the world was perfected and created.

We have to attain a desire, a state where only the blessing from Above can give birth to our spiritual vessel. Only if we join the force of blessing and become one with the Creator (and not by any other efforts of ours) can we acquire the spiritual Kli.[#15242]From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/6/10, The Zohar

There is no Light without a vessel, and no fulfillment without a desire. The Upper Light is in a state of complete rest; it fills and surrounds creation entirely. Everything depends solely on our desire, our vessels of perception. If we yearn for this particular fulfillment, we will perceive it. However, if our desire does not correspond precisely to the frequency or quality of the fulfillment (meaning there is no equivalence of properties between the desire and what fills it), then we don’t feel fulfillment. Multiple examples of the corporeal world attest to this.

We have to bring our desire to the Upper Light to be filled. To do this correctly, the desire has to correspond to the Light, that is, to be in bestowal. How are we going to acquire this force of bestowal? Kabbalists say that the power of bestowal exists in every person, but is very small and remains this way in the person alone.

It can grow only if a person unites with the others. If he wishes to attain bestowal and is willing to do whatever it takes in order to receive from the group and the friends their desires to bestow, then he acquires from them many such desires. He does so in the degree in which he annuls himself and exalts the friends in his own eyes. In this way he is able to receive from them a greater desire to bestow, in both quality and quantity. And if a person possesses the desire to bestow, then the Light during the reading of The Zohar will work on him; it will begin to organize his desire and fill it.

Therefore, preparation to reading TheZohar should take place in the group, in the mutual “incorporation” into each other, in order to form a strong desire. In this case, we will succeed. We can accelerate time and shorten it, without the need to submerge ourselves in prolonged corporeal suffering. We can transform earthly suffering into the torments of love, which means suffering from not having the qualities of bestowal, from not having the desire to give that we must attain. We can work with the group and friends, and in doing so acquire such a will.

As we see, everything is in our hands. We can actually condense time to zero. The Creator created only the point “existence from absence.” The rest He handed to us, so that we increase our desire from the size of the point in the heart to the expanse of Malchut of Infinity. This is only possible if we unite. Therefore we only have a single opportunity to attain the desire for the Light: to strive to be together within our small desires to bestow.

A question I received: If Kabbalists wished to tell us about the Upper World, then why do they describe it using the words of our world and thereby confuse us?

My Answer:Kabbalists communicate with us in the “language of branches.” The science of Kabbalah is written for those who have a point in the heart, meaning for the people who yearn to reveal spirituality, the Upper World. They don’t know what it is, but nevertheless aspire toward it.

You can take a Kabbalistic book and read it as though you are reading about something existing in this world. Yet by doing so, try to constantly imagine that whatever you are reading about exists in the Upper World in the form forces and properties, reception and bestowal, and nothing else. This is why Baal HaSulam defines each word of our world by providing its meaning in the Upper World.

If I aspire to see this picture, then where is it? It’s not somewhere in the heavens; it’s within me. That is, a Kabbalistic book talks about my inner forces, about the world within me. In general, the book talks only about me; everything exists within me: people and animals, the sun, the moon, and the spiritual Partzufim.

However, when I imagine all of this within myself, I also have to wish for the Light to come and correct this picture within me, to let me see and feel these forces of love and bestowal. I desire to reveal not only this bestowal, but also the force that governs it all: the Creator.

To achieve it, I have to imagine that the people surrounding me in this world also exist within me. There is nothing else; everything is merely my inner forces. Start imagining that you now connect with all of these people, that is, with all of these forces within you. When you begin to constantly work with the book in this way, it will direct you toward bestowal. This way you will awaken the real picture and draw it closer to yourself. This is called “attracting the Light that Reforms.”

A Kabbalistic book not only helps us reveal what exists within each of us, it also teaches how to sharpen our vision so as to reveal all the worlds, the entire universe, and all of reality within ourselves. There is nothing outside. That’s why Kabbalah is called an inner science.

My Answer: Yesterday during the Lesson for Children I gave the following example: Every person possesses a very small egoistic force. We can’t reach the spiritual world with it because spirituality entails total bestowal. The spiritual world exists one degree above our world, which means that we have to be stronger by one degree than we currently are.

How can we transform a small, egoistic force into a big, bestowing one? By uniting! We have to unite in the form of a mutual guarantee, that is, to unite overriding all the borders. How?

Suppose there are 50 people, of varying stature. If everybody incorporates himself or herself into the smallest one, he becomes a giant, his height reaching 60 feet and weight 2000 pounds. And what will happen if everyone joins the biggest one, who is taller than everybody else? The result will be the same: There will a 60 foot, 2000 pound giant. In other words, there are no small or big ones in mutual interconnection; rather, everyone becomes equal.

In that case, when will they enter the spiritual world? If they are incorporated into each other, they will do it together. This is what is called “mutual guarantee.”

This is how we should relate to our common spiritual vessel (the soul, Kli). There is no difference between the souls that comprise it, neither in their “height” nor in their “weight.” If new students connect to us, they become worthy of receiving everything that we achieve. Such is a special, miraculous force that mutual guarantee contains.

There is a psychological barrier on the path to the spiritual goal. If I wish to attain bestowal, I must not ask about anything else but how to bestow. Moreover, this isn’t bestowal as defined by my egoistic mind and my current desire. This means I can’t demand anything which is within my current understanding; it would be opposite to true bestowal and the spiritual state. Only when I move into the spiritual state and receive this spiritual attribute, will I begin to examine myself there with my new mind and new heart. Then, I’ll feel and understand within the desires of bestowal.

I simply cannot know about bestowal in my egoistical desires; it won’t work. In fact, the very first phase of entering spirituality is called “crossing the Machsom” (the barrier before the spiritual world) precisely for this reason. The perception of the quality of bestowal is completely separated from anything that’s taking place in my present desires. Therefore, it is above reason (above my current understanding) that I demand the quality of bestowal. I just want to know how to receive this attribute, even though I don’t know what it means. At present, I don’t have any connection with it, any point of contact with it, or the ability to test it. I simply accept it in whatever form it will be handed to me from Above.

Such an attitude doesn’t seem to fit a serious, evolved, intelligent person. However, it is quite the opposite. Those who possess advanced perception, mind, and comprehension of all the processes that we go through, examine their egoism and see how we are entirely controlled and enslaved by it. They understand that we have no choice but to rise above it by cutting ourselves off from our present desires and limited egoistic perception and mind.

Therefore, during the lesson, I’m only asking for the Light to work on me. It doesn’t matter what it’s doing with me. I’m like an infant who doesn’t understand anything, but lies in the arms of its mother, completely compliant with anything she is doing with him. I have to attain such devotion to and annulment before the Upper One. I beg, “Heal me!” Beside this, I ask nothing more.

A question I received: If we are unable to control our states, how can we make them change?

My Answer: We have to ask the Upper Light to give us the ability to learn what bestowal means. I’m not asking for anything more. We are not to know, discern, nor manage states in the sense that we imagine it in our mind. This is possible only to the degree that I rise above my reason, above the approach I’m used to. I can rise to pure bestowal when I don’t request anything else besides it. I have to exist in bestowal rather than request understanding or sensation.

The complete and perfect spiritual vessel is a single and unique desire. I have to ask only for the property of bestowal (faith above reason) so as to know what it is and to exist in it. Then, once I receive this property, I will sense, see, and manage everything.